With weekly exercise, time trumps frequency

July 12, 2013

No matter how they spread out 150 minutes of activity, study participants showed similar disease risk.

(HealthDay)—Good news for weekend warriors: The number of times you exercise in a week isn't as important as getting the recommended 150 minutes of physical activity, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at more than 2,300 Canadian adults to determine if their exercise frequency affected their risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. The participants were classified as either frequently active (five to seven days a week) or infrequently active (one to four days a week).

People who did 150 minutes of exercise on just a few days of the week were no less healthy than those who worked out more often, according to the study published recently in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism.

"The findings indicate that it does not matter how adults choose to accumulate their 150 weekly minutes of physical activity," Dr. Ian Janssen, of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, said in a university news release.

"For instance, someone who did not perform any physical activity on Monday to Friday but was active for 150 minutes over the weekend would obtain the same health benefits from their activity as someone who accumulated 150 minutes of activity over the week by doing 20 to 25 minutes of activity on a daily basis," he explained.

"The important message is that adults should aim to accumulate at least 150 minutes of weekly physical activity in whatever pattern that works for their schedule," Janssen said.

Related Stories

Even small amounts of physical activity will help reduce heart disease risk, and the benefit increases as the amount of activity increases, according to a quantitative review reported in Circulation, journal of the American ...

Adults who include at least 150 minutes of physical activity in their routines each week live longer than those who don't, finds a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Promoting the years of life that ...

Despite the importance of physical activity, many people feel they don't have enough time to exercise. An active lifestyle that includes engaging in physical activity for less than 10 minutes multiple times a day can have ...

A new study by Queen's University researchers has determined that adults who accumulated 150 minutes of exercise on a few days of the week were not any less healthy than adults who exercised more frequently throughout the ...

Recommended for you

It is known that sleep facilitates the formation of long-term memory in humans. In a new study, researchers from Uppsala University now show that sleep does not only help form long-term memory but also ensures access to it ...

Fish oil is one of the most popular dietary supplements in the U.S. because of the perceived cardiovascular benefits of the omega-3 it contains. However, scientific findings on its effectiveness have been conflicting. New ...

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado, New York University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill estimates the number of deaths that can be linked to differences in education, and finds that ...

Columbia University scientists have developed a computational method to investigate the relationship between birth month and disease risk. The researchers used this algorithm to examine New York City medical databases and ...

(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers with Newcastle University in the U.K. has found no evidence of balance or coordination impairments in people watching a stereoscopic (3D) movie on a television screen. In their paper ...

When Americans go out to eat, either at a fast-food outlet or a full-service restaurant, they consume, on average, about 200 more calories a day than when they stay home for meals, a new study reports. They also take in more ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.